Canucks hope for better building with new GM Jim Benning

Iain MacIntyre, Vancouver Sun05.24.2014

Vancouver Canucks president Trevor Linden (left) and new general manager Jim Benning at the news conference at Rogers Arena that introduced Benning to the local media on Friday, May 23, 2014.@VanCanucks (Twitter)
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Jim Benning (right) is introduced by team president Trevor Linden as the new general manager of the Vancouver Canucks in Vancouver on Friday, May 23, 2014.Jason Payne
/ PNG

New Vancouver Canucks general manager Jim Benning (right) listens as team president Trevor Linden talks to reporters at a news conference on Friday, May 24, 2014 at Rogers Arena.Jonathan Hayward
/ Canadian Press

Jim Benning, new general manager of the Vancouver Canucks, smiles at a news conference in Vancouver, on Friday May 23, 2014.Jonathan Hayward
/ Canadian Press

Jim Benning (right), the new general manager of the Vancouver Canucks, with team president Trevor Linden at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on Friday, May 23, 2014.Jason Payne
/ PNG

Jim Benning is introduced as the new general manager of the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on Friday, May 23, 2014.Jason Payne
/ PNG

Jim Benning is introduced as the new general manager of the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on Friday, May 23, 2014.Jason Payne
/ PNG

Jim Benning is introduced as the new general manager of the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on Friday, May 23, 2014.Jason Payne
/ PNG

Jim Benning is introduced as the new general manager of the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on Friday, May 23, 2014.Jason Payne
/ PNG

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The last time the Vancouver Canucks hired a general manager, the new guy inherited a golden goose but claimed the team wasn't close to winning.

Now, Jim Benning takes over what critics claim is a lame duck, and the new manager thinks the Canucks can win next season.

It's hard to imagine two hockey men more different than Benning and Mike Gillis, old school and new fangled. It's equally hard to fathom that their core players are largely the same -- only six years older by the time Benning got them on Friday when he was introduced by Canuck president Trevor Linden as the National Hockey League team's new GM.

Despite his lofty title and salary, the 51-year-old is going to continue to scout. By that, we mean he will actually sit in junior arenas with a coffee and program, watching teenagers fumbling towards the NHL. Don't expect the Canucks to build another "mind room" anytime soon.

"I think it's very important," Benning said of scouting. "I think maybe that's why Trevor hired me. The draft is going to be important for us... because we get to add seven players every year to our organization. Between Trevor and me, we're going to share that (management) responsibility. Maybe the team goes out on the road and Trevor's with the team, and I peel off and go scout some games."

"We're going to be about hard work. We're going to be a team here. We're going to ask our players to be selfless and play hard for one another. And us, as a management team, are going to be the same way."

He said of the Canucks: "I like our core players. Our core players, I feel, are high-character people. I'm happy with that part of it. Some of the players, for whatever reason, just didn't have a good year last year. But it's a good team, though. It's a talented team and I feel confident these guys are going to have a good year next year."

Earlier, in an interview for the Canucks' website, Benning said: "This is a team we can turn around in a hurry." As with Gillis in 2008, it wasn't what many expected to hear.

The Canucks just finished an 83-point season -- their worst since the 1990s ­ that got both Gillis and head coach John Tortorella fired. It was the lowest-scoring team in franchise history.

The Canucks' core, rightly identified by Tortorella as "stale," is comprised of players mostly 30-33 years old. There is a cliff looming for the Canucks. The Calgary Flames, an example of a team whose staleness turned to rot, are at the bottom of it.

True, the Canucks in theory can add seven players a year to their organization through the entry draft. But they haven't put seven draft picks into the NHL in the last nine years.

But Benning is going to blow up neither the roster nor the scouting department. He's going to try to draft better by working with scouts and giving them detailed instructions about the type of players he wants. And he¹s going to try to improve the depth around the Canucks' core, and hire a coach who will restore the team's up-tempo style and allow attacking players to attack.

"We need to get back to what we're good at," he said. "This organization needs to play an up-tempo, fast, skating, skilled game. Before last season, this team had like an attitude about them, almost a relentless attitude, that they were going to skate to wear teams down and to score. For whatever reason, that didn't happen last year."

Yes, on his first day on the job, Benning said "we." For the last eight years, he was part of "them" as an assistant general manager with the Boston Bruins, who bullied the Canucks in the 2011 Stanley Cup final. The folksy Edmontonian also said "like" and "stuff." He's not trying to be the smartest guy in the room. He's trying to build a hockey team.

There isn't much ego or pretentiousness to Jim Benning, whose father, Elmer, has scouted 38 years for the Montreal Canadiens and whose son, Brandon, scouts for Calgary.

All Benning knows is being part of a team. And it was fairly clear after Friday's press conference that his management and scouting teams in Vancouver will include most of the people left over from the Gillis regime. Assistant GMs Laurence Gilman and Lorne Henning have different skill sets and responsibilities than Benning. Even chief scout Ron Delorme, easy to vilify for the Canucks' poor draft record even if he wasn't responsible for trading away any of the two dozen picks various GMs have surrendered the last decade, gets the benefit of the doubt from Benning.

"Listen, this is what I¹m going to do," Benning said. "I come from a scouting background. We¹re going to give these guys direction. I'm going to communicate to these guys what we want, what we think a Vancouver Canuck player should be, and I'm going to work with them. I'm going to try to make that group better. That's what the plan is."

"Ron Delorme is a very good person, know what I mean? I don't know what happened before I got here today. I don¹t know what happened. We're going to work together to do a good job."

And the guy he'll work most closely with is Linden, who was an 18-year-old kid from Medicine Hat just starting in the NHL in 1988 when Benning was a 25-year-old teammate nearing the end of his playing career.

Linden interviewed Benning twice, the second time last Thursday in Toronto, and each said their shared vision on what the Canucks have and need and how hockey teams should be built is why Benning is now the GM.

Quiet by nature, Benning had his first big press conference on Friday. Don't expect to see him in front of the cameras every day.

"We weren't looking for a face of the franchise," Linden, the face of the franchise, said. "I wanted an individual who had a real specialized skill, was cut from the cloth of a talent evaluator, has built teams, who had been part of successful organizations and lived in a hockey environment."

"I think Jim comes from a place where there were no titles and no egos, and he just wants to roll up his sleeves and have a real good dynamic with his group and go to work. At the end of the day, he's going to be able to shape that group and shape the organization."

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Canucks hope for better building with new GM Jim Benning

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